A blog about science fiction and fantasy novels, films and related matters

Saturday, 2 April 2016

Film: The Quatermass Xperiment (1955)

A few weeks
ago, in my review of Interzone 262,
I devoted a paragraph to the Quatermass stories, which originated in BBC TV
serials in the early 1950s. Coincidentally one of the spin-off feature films
was shown on UK TV recently, so of course I had to watch it.

An
experimental manned space rocket returns to Earth in a crash-landing. Only one
of the three crew is on board, and he is in a catatonic state. He gradually
recovers consciousness but his physical condition continues to worsen, despite
which he escapes from hospital and starts to attack people. The rocket
scientist Professor Quatermass, in charge of the mission, realises that the man
has been taken over by an alien life form, and the race is on to stop the
creature from reproducing via spores and spreading across the planet.

The Quatermass Xperiment was one of three such films made by
the Hammer film studios in England, following the success of the TV serials
featuring the same scientist. Hammer subsequently became famous for making
horror movies, this film being the first example of their creepy style.

One
difference between this film and the original TV serials is that Hammer used an
American actor (Brian Donlevy) to play Quatermass, apparently in the hope that
this would make the film more palatable to the US market. I found this very
jarring; Quatermass sounded more like a hard-boiled private eye than the
diffident professor of the TV shows. He also appeared to be in control of
everything – including launching a rocket on his own initiative, which seems
strange to us today. There is another US actor in the film (Margia Dean – who I
see from Wiki is still around at the age of 93) who speaks with a weirdly
artificial-sounding, very soft voice – did American women ever speak like that in real life? It isn't just the American
accents which seem odd today – the sound of what might be called
"BBC" British English has changed radically, with news announcers of
the 1950s sounding ridiculous now. In the film, there is a scene with a girl of
maybe 6 or 7 who sounds exactly like the adults, with a precise and carefully enunciated
“posh” speech which would have people today rolling around in laughter,
assuming it was some kind of spoof.

It was
interesting to see Jack Warner as a police inspector; he was subsequently
demoted to constable to take the lead role in the police TV series Dixon of Dock Green, which ran for 21
years. The Scottish actor Gordon Jackson, well-known from later TV series
(especially Upstairs, Downstairs and The Professionals), also makes an
appearance.

The Quatermass Xperiment was a considerable success, and it
is easy to see why: it is well-plotted and held my attention throughout. Of
course, it was a product of its time and radically different from similar movies
made today, so is very much a period piece. On a final note: I watched this
after rejecting City of Bones; a
film which seemed promising but repelled me with a prolonged scene of crude
violence in which a woman is beaten up. Score zero for subtlety and restraint;
I have no wish to watch such stuff.

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I started this blog in order to post reviews and comments on Science Fiction and Fantasy (mostly books or films, but occasionally on more general issues such as publishing and marketing), and of course to alert those readers not yet aware of the delights which lie in store within the covers of my own novels...see below.

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Anthony G Williams

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